18 September 2010

Wrapping Up the Week

It's been another whirlwind week around here. And I am tired! There have been lots of great highlights from this week though and that makes all the hard work worth it.

Our week started out with an official *Monday*. I sincerely hope that every Monday will not be like that. It got better though. That evening The Princess became a Brownie in the Girl Scouts! She was so adorable saying her pledge in front of her troop (she likes public speaking about as much as I do...not at all!), I was so proud of her. And yep, I'm all signed up to be an official volunteer now, too. That probably means more things on the calendar...oh, well. I had such fun as a kid being a Missionette (a church program similar to the Scouts) and I'm glad The Princess has an opportunity to do something like that. It's also cool that her troop is led by two homeschool moms from our local group and all of the girls in her troop are homeschool girls.

We got our paper mache solar system all finished and hung up in our learning room this week (or should I say my awesome hubby got that all taken care of while we admired his handiwork:). Either way, our solar system ROCKS! You can read more details about it here.

We are really enjoying science this year! This week we enjoyed some fun notebooking projects and reviewing what we've learned so far.

Our studies are clicking right along. Mr. B is doing great with his early reading. I think he's impatient to wrap up the short vowels and long vowels and start really cracking some books! He's been having fun this week though making his own *books* of short vowel word families. The Princess has mostly been doing review work in grammar and her first *test* was today. She did great:) Her reader is taking us through the story of Robinson Crusoe and we are enjoying her reading it to us every day.

We continued our studies of Bach and Van Gogh this week. We read through a fun book about Bach from the library, listened to his music daily and studied another of Van Gogh's paintings. The kids are loving these studies! I plan to share more about them in detail when we conclude the month.

In history we have been learning about the ancient nomads and how they lived. One of our projects this week was to make a *cave painting* in their style. To do this I cut up a paper bag, we wrinkled it all up and then smoothed it out to give the effect of a rough cave wall. I mixed up some *natural* paint colors and let them do their thing. They really got into it, although I think my son painted a nomadic Santa and Rudolf...lol

Finally, today we concluded our school week with our co-op classes. We always look forward to those (I especially look forward to that one hour of downtime that I get in the *moms' room*)! I assist in two classes. The first one is the early elementary music class. Have I mentioned they are learning to play the recorder? Please pray for me!! (I'm only half joking:).

Why didn't I volunteer for my son's music class?! They mostly just sing fun songs and try out an instrument or two. Doesn't he look adorable here, paying such rapt attention to the teacher? It's a rare still moment for him!

And this is why I am not in my son's music class: I'm in my daughter's *blood & guts* class. Today was all about bones. First we inspected bone-in pork chops and discussed all the finer points of bones in general.

Then the kids had fun labeling each others' major bones and discussing how their bones work. It's really a fun class!

Now I'm off to get some sleep, tomorrow (I guess that's actually today now) is going to be busy with shopping, errands, football and birthday parties! I hope you have a great weekend, too!

P.S. If some of you are wondering why I have not dropped by or commented recently, I want to say I'm really not being a snob. I've actually tried commenting on many blogs lately without success. Without getting into boring bloggy detail, let's suffice to say I had a third-party cookie issue with my computer. It has now been remedied and I can comment away!! So expect to hear from me soon:)

Great co-op classes. We always had so much fun doing co-ops when the kids were younger. You appreciate the benefits immediately but wait until you realize the lasting effects this type of educating has on your kids when they are older. This is well worth all the hard work you are enduring through these weeks. As for not commenting, we totally understand. Thanks for posting so we can catch up with your life this week. Have a great weekend.

You're right -- your solar system DOES rock! I am envious of your fabu science studies. Science is the area in which I feel the least competent and, therefore, give the shortest shrift. I'm trying to remedy that this year, and your post encouraged me!

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Welcome!

I am a fully devoted follower of Christ, a wife and partner in ministry to my awesome husband, a mother to our two precious children, and a homemaker. Here is where I talk about my family, cooking, homeschooling, traveling and life in general. I'm so glad you stopped by! I hope you enjoy your visit~don't forget to leave a comment so I can come visit you, too!